Ann Widdecombe’s last farewell
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Funerals are not easy. I am guessing that most of my audience here will know all about that.
I can still remember carrying the coffin of my Grandmother Vance and gripping the handle with such force that my hand bled throughout the service. I was traumatised by her loss, even though she was 90. However, I took comfort from the fact that she died peacefully in her sleep.
Yesterday saw the funeral of Ann Widdecombe, and this lady did not die peacefully. As we know, she was bludgeoned to death in her final moments.
I thought there was something poignant about seeing the images from her funeral. After all the headlines, the speculation and the police investigations, this was the moment when she was being remembered not as a political story, but simply as Ann.
This was the last farewell to Ann, the person.
We need to remember that there is always a real human being behind the political façade.
Her family, friends and colleagues gathered at Buckfast Abbey in Devon for her Requiem Mass. It was a relatively small and private occasion, attended by around 100 mourners. Those involved say that is what she would have wanted.
Buckfast Abbey was not just a picturesque location for the funeral. Ann worshipped there regularly and had described the Abbey as her “safe haven.” She went there to worship and experience the comfort of her faith. As she once observed:
“All I do is what I think is right, and leave the rest to God.”
I think we all need a safe haven, don’t we?
It doesn’t matter what it is, but it needs to be somewhere that gets us away from the madding crowd, from the noise and argument of daily life. For Ann, who spent decades immersed in the worlds of politics and broadcasting, Buckfast Abbey appears to have been such a place.
And so she returned there for the last time.
For her final visit.
I found myself thinking about the contrast between the way somebody lives publicly and the way their life ultimately ends.
Ann Widdecombe spent almost four decades as one of the most recognisable figures in British public life. Everyone thinks they know her, although few truly did, I suspect. Those were the people who attended her final journey.
Ann entered Parliament in 1987 and went on to become a government minister. She fought many political battles along the way. She fearlessly crossed swords with opponents. She became a television personality and danced on Strictly. She even appeared on reality television. She then became a Brexit Party MEP and, later, a prominent voice for Reform UK.
What a rich life she lived.
People agreed with Ann and people disagreed with her.
People laughed with her and occasionally laughed at her.
She probably didn’t care very much which!
That was part of what made Ann Widdecombe Ann Widdecombe.
She possessed something increasingly rare in modern public life: she appeared entirely comfortable being herself.
There was remarkably little political packaging about her.
Ann was exactly as she appeared. That’s a rarity. She did not have two faces. I interviewed her back in 2022 and she was just as I expected!
You knew what Ann believed because she told you.
You knew what her faith meant to her because she never attempted to conceal it.
“You get to heaven through Christ… I don’t know any other way of getting there.”
You knew when she disagreed with you because she wasn’t especially inclined to disguise that either.
At a time when politicians are coached to within an inch of their lives, Ann belonged to an older tradition.
She was a conviction politician.
She didn’t need a focus group to inform her opinions.
Her Catholic faith was not merely another item on her political CV. At the Mass, those closest to her emphasised that it was the foundation around which she ordered her life.
“For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England’s compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn’t care if something is unpopular.”
She regularly attended Mass at Buckfast Abbey and was present there for Easter and other important occasions.
That matters because it helps us understand the woman rather than merely the politician.
There is a natural tendency after somebody dies to smooth away their edges.
Suddenly everyone was wonderful.
Every disagreement is forgotten.
Every controversy becomes impolite to mention.
I really don’t think Ann would have wanted that, do you?
She had plenty of edges. That was the whole point.
She could be stubborn, provocative, funny, infuriating and gloriously unfashionable. She held views which sometimes made her deeply unpopular, and she generally held them regardless.
I think there is something admirable about that, even when you disagree with the view itself.
In fact, perhaps especially then.
It is how I try to live my own life.
One of the tributes recalled that friendship with Ann did not necessarily follow political lines and that surviving a vigorous argument with her could almost improve your standing in her eyes! She enjoyed a good argument!
It was also observed that during her public career she endured an extraordinary amount of ridicule and abuse, yet frequently responded by laughing at it herself.
That’s the sign of a balanced human being, and it tells you rather more about someone than a list of ministerial appointments ever could.
But inevitably, the funeral also brought back the horror of how Ann died.
She was only 78. My Mum and Dad died at the same age.
Whatever the eventual outcome of the criminal proceedings and the wider counter-terrorism investigation, we already know that her life ended violently in her own home on Dartmoor on 8 July.
There will be plenty more to say about all of this as the investigation proceeds.
I have written about the extraordinary developments surrounding the investigation, and I suspect there are still important questions to be answered.
But perhaps this isn’t the day for them.
I also think that Ann should not be permanently remembered by the way in which her life ended.
She deserves better than that.
A violent act lasted minutes.
Her life lasted 78 years.
And those years contained far more than just the terrible events of one July afternoon.
They contained faith, friendships, arguments, elections, defeats, victories, television studios, Commons debates, laughter and undoubtedly a fair amount of irritation caused to people who found themselves on the receiving end of a Widdecombe opinion.
That’s a life richly lived.
For Christians, of course, the funeral is not understood simply as the end.
“O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?”
That was central to the Requiem. The Abbot of Buckfast spoke about suffering, death and the Christian hope of everlasting life. Ann certainly believed that. I believe it too. Perhaps that also explains some of her fearlessness.
If politics is not the highest thing in your universe, political approval becomes considerably less important. There is lesson in that for our current crop of political leaders.
Ann Widdecombe spent decades being told what respectable opinion was supposed to think. Quite often, she declined the invitation. Sometimes she got it right. At other times, she was wrong. But she was rarely ambiguous.
Yesterday, there were no television studios, no parliamentary divisions and no political rallies. Just the ancient rhythms of a Requiem Mass inside the Abbey she loved, and a small gathering of people saying goodbye. Ann had come home to her safe haven.
And those who knew her had the chance to say their final farewell.
I was touched reading a tribute by her friend Iain Dale. Now, Iain and I are not best buddies, but I can appreciate his generous tribute.
I do hope Ann’s views on Heaven and the afterlife have turned out to be true.
I hope I meet her there one day.
May she rest in peace.
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